“There was a bit of pressure on me but don’t forget we only had a handful of runs on the car,” Bray revealed. “We had run well in testing so I knew we could do it in qualifying, especially after running the so well in Top Alcohol,” he added. While it was a bit nerve wracking the Brisbane racer never doubted his machine and a 6.11 came up on the boards and he was in fourth.
The debut of the new Ben Bray Castrol GTO (nee Monaro) didn’t go all to plan, firstly getting in on the last qualifying session with a 6.11 then losing to Stevens on a hole-shot with his 6.14 going down to a 6.15.
While Bray was the class of Top Alcohol, in Doorslammer he was about to run into the Brett Stevens juggernaut. Brett is the Don Schumacher down under with the biggest multi-vehicle team. He has two Jack Daniels-sponsored Top Fuel bikes in competition as well as his JD Studebaker Top Doorslammer. Lastly he was wheeling the Kitten Car Polish Mustang Top Alky car. Wife Kath also has a Corvette split window Doorslammer, not to mention a couple of burnout cars.
The second round of Top Doorslammer saw Paul Greghini up on two wheels at third track – luckily he bought it back down without any further incident.
Back to the race and in round one of the doored class the two went head to head. After copious burnouts the two edged into the beams and on the green it was Brett out first with a .79 to .136 start. At the other end his 6.156 was too good for a 6.148 and Bray was out. In the next round Stevens had a bit of a gift when opponent, Paul Geghini (shown) in his Corvette went up on two wheels allowing Stevens' 6.189/229.27 into what would be the first of three, yes three, finals.
In America obviously you have four professional categories in NHRA, where as down under we have six Group 1 professional categories. In addition to the four brackets run in America ANDRA runs Top Bike (Top Fuel Bike) and Top Alcohol (as explained above). On race day Stevens was racing in three categories and ended up competing in all three finals (a world record for pro categories and it would go close to being a record for all brackets).
In Top Bike it was no surprise to see Brett top qualified with a 6.69/207.02 on his Harley fueler; what was a surprise was not seeing the streamlined bike of Jay Upton in the field. A bum set of clutch discs caused the Westralian no end of problems and in the end he was outside looking in.
Stevens had an easy first round win over Craig Bonwick’s Harley with a 6.85 getting by a second-best 6.97. The second round saw an even easier race when Dennis Grant’s 8.04 was caught and passed by Stevens’ better 6.76/204.98.
Looking back, it was the sponsorship of Top Bike which started the Stevens juggernaut on the road to success. Jack Daniels have sponsored the colourful Stevens for many years targeting the big biker market and their love for bourbon. After starting out with one bike the sponsorship was extended to a second bike and ultimately the Studebaker doorslammer. His wife Kath also ran the Corvette under the JD banner and, using the lessons learned with his prime sponsor, Stevens bought Kitten car polish on board to sponsor his alky car.
